We sat down with Daniel Wiley to discuss the role of community organizing in housing policy and housing justice.

Daniel: In my heart of hearts, I’m a community organizer. The more I’ve done the work, I’ve realized that there are so many ways of organizing beyond agitating with bullhorns and signs. The best way for me is to make sure that I’m as resourceful as possible, that I’m not taking up the space but giving the community the space. It’s how you absorb what people tell you, how people absorb what you say to them. You’re building trust, both for you and for what you’re sharing.

You mentioned starting out in arts and hip hop culture. How does that intersect with your work?

Daniel: I was engulfed in hip hop culture in Newark and New York City, working with a collective of street artists. In my early 30s, I came across a job opportunity to organize in my old neighborhood for Ironbound Community Corporation (ICC). I remember my first thought was, I think we could build a wiffle ball field at my old grammar school. But my first organizing campaign began when a public housing tenant came in and shared with me a notice to shut down the Millard E. Terrell Homes public housing. That led me to jump into what felt like one of the longest housing campaigns that folks in the city have worked on. The dream of being an artist led me to where I am, but I still use that creativity, that sense of community, and that energy on a daily basis.

In Newark, including East Ironbound, street art is important to our city’s culture. So we started working with a collective of street artists to figure out how to preserve this culture. We initially started beautifying the area with murals. One artist said, “Oh great, we can use this to gentrify the neighborhood.” And I realized we had to take a couple steps back and talk about why we were doing this. We looked at Wynwood in Miami and Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program, and the contrast between the two. We learned that we had to ensure the rest of the community is part of the process. Bringing more community members in helped us realize what it actually means to preserve a culture. They wanted to see themselves on these walls.

Now that Newark is in the beginning stages of its development boom, we started focusing on other ways to protect our communities. What precautions can we put in place to help our community stay in place? So we worked on a rent control campaign. That galvanized folks to think about what other policies were in place. The executive director of Ironbound Community Corporation drafted the first inclusionary zoning ordinance for the City of Newark. We followed the lead of New York City with Right to Council, making Newark the third city in the whole country to pass it. 

You’ve helped advance several major housing policies in Newark. For those unfamiliar, what’s their impact?

Daniel: Newark’s rent control policy is one of the strongest in the nation. We actually have anti-vacancy decontrol, and other measures that help to keep communities together. Our inclusionary zoning policy is progressive but the challenges come in the enforcement. Same with right to counsel – the enforcement capacity keeps it from reaching its full potential.

One of the things that we’re focusing on now is community ownership. After creating ordinances, how far into the process does community engagement stop? How do we get it to go further? With inclusionary zoning, there weren’t measures in place to make sure that after it crossed the City Hall line, the community was still involved. Enforcement actually impacts development moving forward.

What critical housing challenges are you facing through the Housing Justice Project right now?

Daniel: Development is dictating the future of what our communities are going to look like, and we’re also as a community not having the opportunity to actually define what a community is or what neighborhoods should look like, even though we go through all these meetings for master plans.

We just lost the campaign we were working on for the last year, which was to stop like this 30-story development, in a neighborhood where most of the community is capped at five stories. It started off with three or four people, and it turned into 100 people showing up to a Planning Board meeting, which is unusual. And still basically the city said, it’s cool that you came out, but guess what? We have our own vision of what’s going to happen, and granted that developer their permit.

As development happens, eviction cases are going up. We’re seeing landlords illegally trying to increase rents by $1,000, even though rent increases are capped between like $50 to like $100 when the lawful percentage (attached to the Consumer Price Index) is applied.

Habitability is also a major issue – issues with elevators, buildings with units where nothing is updated or fixed, just issue upon issue all across the city. Unfortunately, all of this lands the hardest on our already vulnerable residents. We’re also paying close attention to our immigrant population who are really suffering right now, on top of what’s going on at the federal level. 

Can you describe the New Jersey Legal Design Lab and your role there?

Daniel: The Lab brings together third-year law students who are interested in movement lawyering. My job as community engagement lead is to bring the community members together with them. Are we introducing community spaces to classroom spaces or classroom spaces to community spaces?

In collaboration, community members and students work together to build prototypes for what might be useful in the community. Right now we’re working on a tenant resource hub. It can be hard to believe the amount of people that don’t understand their basic rights as a tenant because the information is unclear. We have the first part live now as a prototype, and we are always collecting feedback to understand what is the most important information needed, and how community members understand that information so that it is empowering and useful beyond or before crisis.

We’re also thinking about a community school, to help community members understand zoning, tenant rights, reading leases, anti-eviction strategies, and anything else people on the ground feel could benefit their movements. 

Another piece we hope to offer is to help people know the history behind what they might be experiencing. That emphasis on history came directly from community leaders. While one of the members of our Co-Lab space, a librarian, was facilitating a conversation, everybody perked up when they mentioned Newark’s history, and we realized we should talk about this more.

How do you apply an anti-racist approach to your work?

Daniel: Paying attention to the nuance is really important, the ability to listen intently and actually absorb what people are saying. Outside of language justice, there’s also community language that you have to understand. People want to be heard, no matter the setting. So you have to work to understand. It might take an hour to pick up on one thing, or you might get a one word answer, but it comes from a very real place. 

I think we really have to talk about how we get more people of color in positions of power, in a meaningful way. It’s too easy to tokenize community members, to have someone be in your space to legitimize your work, rather than the other way around. Those of us that work in spaces of power need to make sure that us being in community spaces actually legitimizes the community, rather than legitimizing the institution.

Daniel Joseph Wiley is a lifelong resident of Newark, NJ, where he has spent most of his time creating space for public art, and organizing with tenants for housing policy and positive change in communities.